Sorry for the lengthy delay in posting. I had foot surgery on Wednesday and the pain killers took me longer to recover from than expected as I was pretty wonky most of the time.

Below is the screenshot from around Orel after my turn. As you can see Saper wiped out my isolated units and advanced NE towards my river line. I'm hoping to bleed him some here if possible. But he appears to have moved some of his panzers out of this area.

T59: Saper moves all his mobile forces South (at least as far as I can tell), thus abandoning his drive in the Orel area. Although Saper is now concentrating all of his mobile forces into one area; he is now down to less than 1500 operational tanks, so I think perhaps it is probably a case of too little too late.

Below is the screenshot from before my turn of the important sector around Voroshilovgrad. Fortunately I had moved one of my best armies in to the neighbourhood myself last turn, so was able to make some very successful counterattacks.

One aspect of the war that I am unhappy with is the Air War. Saper continues to shoot my fighters down in droves. It is getting so bad that I may actually run out of fighters, something that at one time I would have thought impossible.

Your IL-2 production looks real low which is odd because you said you evacuated the factories at Voronezh previously.

You may be deploying too many FB regiments. The newly arrived ones start with experience in the 30's and 40's. As the war progresses into 1943, I disband most newly arriving F/FB regiments with low experience so the pool stays stocked with aircraft for what should be by that time experienced air crews already deployed. I like keeping the air units in the NR to a reasonable level because they don't gain experience there. Also you should at this point only have a minimal air presence on Leningrad and Northwest Fronts as there is little action going on there. Send any excess to the NR, and then to the active fronts. Active fronts should deploy anywhere from 2-3 bases 75-100% loaded with F/FB's and the most experienced air crews. Check the air ratings on your air front/air army commanders where the action is hot. They should be 5-6 air rating to repair damaged aircraft more quickly.

Your IL-2 production looks real low which is odd because you said you evacuated the factories at Voronezh previously.

I did evacuate all of my Il-2 factories, but only 1 of each. It is taking a long time for them to build back up.

quote:

You may be deploying too many FB regiments. The newly arrived ones start with experience in the 30's and 40's. As the war progresses into 1943, I disband most newly arriving F/FB regiments with low experience so the pool stays stocked with aircraft for what should be by that time experienced air crews already deployed. I like keeping the air units in the NR to a reasonable level because they don't gain experience there. Also you should at this point only have a minimal air presence on Leningrad and Northwest Fronts as there is little action going on there. Send any excess to the NR, and then to the active fronts. Active fronts should deploy anywhere from 2-3 bases 75-100% loaded with F/FB's and the most experienced air crews. Check the air ratings on your air front/air army commanders where the action is hot. They should be 5-6 air rating to repair damaged aircraft more quickly.

Thanks for the tips M60A3TTS. If things get too bad I'll disband some of my low experience FB Regiments. I do have only minimal air presence in the NW and Leningrad Fronts. In fact I may now start transferring some from the Western and Bryansk Fronts to the South as well.

My active Fronts have 6 to 7 airbases with the usual breakdown as follows:

a) 2 or 3 bases loaded with 9 FB regiments each, b) 1 WS Base with 1 or 2 recon regiments and 2 or 3 IL4 regiments. The IL4's are mostly set to night missions to supply the partisans. Not sure if it is worth supplying the partisans at this point as the German rail network is too extensive to cause any serious damage. c) 2 bases each with 4 heavy bomber regiments. I find putting more than 4 heavy bomber regiments per airbase causes them to be overloaded. d) 1 base with 6 or so tactical bomber regiments (mostly the crappy U2VS set to night missions). I would like to have more, but until my Il2 production gets rebuilt to acceptable levels this is all I can manage.

I do have some good quality FB regiments, but not as many as I would like. I've also noticed that in many air battles I will shoot down a good number of Axis bombers but very few fighters, while he will shoot down a large number of my fighters, but few bombers. Does anyone know if the game is hardwired for the Soviets to ignore the escorts while going after the bombers? Or is this something I can change with my Air Doctrine settings?

Unless you have already done so, now is the time to decide on and build the support units that will be added to your first batch of Corps in '43. An Inf Corps really costs 16 AP (more if you have to build the Divisions), not 10. The SU need to gain experience and at 1 pt/turn it takes a while. As to which type(s), you can't go wrong with Sappers (sounds like a mildly annoying Coca-Cola slogan) since it's very different from the current battles to attack dug-in Germans that are supported by reserves. So 100 (at least) Sapper Regiments formed by South Ural MD that should sit there and train.

A sprinkling of Hv Tank Reg is possible (and the only way to get the heavies to leave the pool), but these are not available to be formed until 10/42. A handful of Flame Tank Bat to get those out of the pool as well, but the production is rather low. You don't want a half strength SU occupying a slot that could contain a full strength Sapper Reg. I don't like the regular Tank SU due to the vehicle requirements, but it's a matter of taste as well.

I would think that saper is even less happy with the Air War than you - the Axis numbers are decreasing and you outproduce him.

When I opened my turn I discovered that Saper does indeed still have some surprises for me. In this case the isolating of several more units including 3 cavalry corps and 3 of my best Guards infantry divisions. Reopening the pocket would be easy, getting my cavalry out would also be no challenge. But the final attack to open the pathway for my Guards Divisions failed.

Here is what I saw when I opened my turn. The red circled Axis hexes indicate my successful attacks, the blue circled hex is the failed attack, The green circled units are the cavalry corps and other units I was able to escape with, the purple circled units are the doomed guards divisions.

Unless you have already done so, now is the time to decide on and build the support units that will be added to your first batch of Corps in '43. An Inf Corps really costs 16 AP (more if you have to build the Divisions), not 10. The SU need to gain experience and at 1 pt/turn it takes a while. As to which type(s), you can't go wrong with Sappers (sounds like a mildly annoying Coca-Cola slogan) since it's very different from the current battles to attack dug-in Germans that are supported by reserves. So 100 (at least) Sapper Regiments formed by South Ural MD that should sit there and train.

A sprinkling of Hv Tank Reg is possible (and the only way to get the heavies to leave the pool), but these are not available to be formed until 10/42. A handful of Flame Tank Bat to get those out of the pool as well, but the production is rather low. You don't want a half strength SU occupying a slot that could contain a full strength Sapper Reg. I don't like the regular Tank SU due to the vehicle requirements, but it's a matter of taste as well.

I would think that saper is even less happy with the Air War than you - the Axis numbers are decreasing and you outproduce him.

Thanks for the advice gingerbread. I have already started building the support units. But I screwed up and started building them in STAVKA. Now if I try to build new ones in a MD(my own preference was the one near Saratov) it wants to pull them from STAVKA rather than build new ones. Is there a fix for this? I currently have about 60 Sapper regiments, 10 independent tank battalions, a half dozen or so AT regiments (are they worth it?), a flame tank battalion, and a few AA regiments. My plan was to build another 40 Sapper regiments and 20 or so HV Tank regiments when they become available. I'll follow your advice and build a few more flame tank battalions as well.

My main issues at the moment are that I ended my turn with only 84 APs and my Armaments are below 10,000. The reason for the low APs is that I spent 46 this turn forming 2 more Guards Rifle Corps. I would rather have avoided this, but it was necessary if I was to have any chance at all to free my trapped guards divisions. Although the attempt ultimately failed (well probably failed anyway as I believe Saper will retrap them) these 2 corps were instrumental in causing the retreat/rout of 6 panzer/motorized divisions.

There is a 'Build New' check box that also activates a multiple build (1-10) option.

I'd keep the AT & AA in the Army HQ and use the Corps slots for offensive type SU. Your game if any shows that you don't need AT to cause AFV losses. The AT SU are too small to take up a Corps slot.

Routing the Pz/Mot is an extra bonus since they will not receive replacements during their following turn due to the sequence of play, so AP well spent.

I think that the Soviet F/FB are too slow to catch an German F, so they go after the bombers instead. The important thing is to have a lot of Air Groups in the area so that there are some/a lot of surviving F/FB that can take on the bombers. Just a few is worse than none. In any case, it's the effect on the ground battle that matters.

As expected Saper re-isolated my Guards Rifle divisions and, even worse, 2 of the Guards Cavalry Corps that "escaped" last turn. The enclosure was a lot tighter this turn than last, but, as you'll see, I had more than enough force in the area to deal with the situation.

Saper continues to "roll" well on the attack. Below are 4 of the battles that, with a little bit of luck I think I could have won. Having said that I won all of my important battles as well; except for one where I accidentally attacked the hex before I had "selected" all of the units I wanted to participate in the attack. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I think the game favors the attacker too much.